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"I am like hell!"
"Also I suppose you'll want to right the wrong you did Clara? You'll want to
marry her truly?" demanded Lucy, with infinite sarcasm.
"You've got the wrong hunch, Luce," he replied, laughing coarsely. "I jest
want to read her this letter. Shore I've been keepin' it secret these days for
her to see first. Then I'll tell Joe Denmeade an' every other man in this
woods."
"Haven't you made Clara suffer enough?" queried Lucy, trying to keep her voice
steady and her wits working.
"She ran off from me. I reckon with another man."
"You're a liar! Oh, I'll make you pay for this!" cried Lucy, in desperation.
Suddenly she saw him turn his head. Listening. He had not heard her outburst.
Then Lucy's strained hearing caught the welcome clatter of hoofs. Quick as a
flash she snatched the letter out of Middleton's hands.
"Heah, give that back!" he shouted fiercely.
Like a cat Lucy leaped over desks into another aisle, and then, facing about,
she thrust the letter into the bosom of her blouse. Middleton leaned forward,
glaring in amaze and fury.
"I'll tear your clothes off," he shouted, low and hard.
"Jim Middleton, if you know when you're well off you'll get out of here and
out of the country before these Denmeades learn what you've done," returned
Lucy.
"An' I'll beat you good while I'm tearin' your clothes off," he declared as he
crouched.
"Edd Denmeade will kill you!" whispered Lucy, beginning to weaken.
"Once more," he hissed venomously, "give me that letter...It's my proof about
the baby!"
And on the instant a quick jangling step outside drew the blood from Lucy's
heart. Middleton heard it and wheeled with muttered curse.
Edd Denmeade leaped over the threshold and seemed to fill the schoolroom with
his presence. Blood flowed from his bare head, down his cheek. His eyes, like
pale flames, swept from Lucy to Middleton, to the limp figure of the girl on
the floor, and then back to Lucy. The thrill that flooded over her then seemed
wave on wave of shock. He had been fighting. His clothes were in rags and
wringing wet. He advanced slowly, with long strides, his piercing gaze
shifting to Middleton.
"Howdy, cowboy! I met your pard, Bud Sprall, down the trail. Reckon you'd
better go rake up what's left of him an' pack it out of here."
"The hell you say!" ejaculated Middleton, stepping to meet Edd half-way. He
was slow, cautious, menacing, and somehow sure of himself. "Wal, I'd as lief
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meet one Denmeade as another. An' I've shore got somethin' to say."
"You can't talk to me," returned Edd, with measured coldness. "I don't know
nothin' about you--'cept you're a pard of Sprall's. That's enough...Now go
along with you pronto."
The red of Middleton's face had faded to a pale white except for the livid
mark across his cheek. But to Lucy it seemed his emotion was a passionate
excitement rather than fear. He swaggered closer to Edd.
"Say, you wild-bee hunter, you're goin' to hear somethin' aboot this Watson
girl."
Edd took a slow, easy step, then launched body and arm into pantherish
agility. Lucy did not see the blow, but she heard it. Sharp and sudden, it
felled Middleton to the floor half a dozen paces toward the stove. He fell so
heavily that he shook the school-house. For a moment he lay gasping while Edd
stepped closer. Then he raised himself on his elbow and turned a distorted
face, the nose of which appeared smashed flat. He looked a fiend inflamed with
lust to murder. But cunningly as he turned away and began to labour to get to
his feet, he did not deceive Lucy.
"Watch out, Edd! He has a gun!" she screamed.
Even then Middleton wheeled, wrenching the gun from his hip. Lucy saw its
sweep as she saw Edd leap, and suddenly bereft of strength she slipped to the
floor, back against a desk, eyes tight shut, senses paralysed, waiting for the
report she expected. But it did not come. Scrape of boots, clash of spurs,
hard expulsions of breath, attested to another kind of fight.
She opened wide her eyes. Edd and Middleton each had two hands on the weapon,
and were leaning back at arm's-length, pulling with all their might.
"I'm agonna bore you--you damn' wild-bee hunter!" panted the cowboy, and then
he bent to bite at Edd's hands. Edd gave him a tremendous kick that brought a
bawl of pain and rage from Middleton.
Then began a terrific struggle for possession of the gun. Lucy crouched there,
fascinated with horror. Yet how the hot nerves of her body tingled! She awoke
to an awful attention, to a dim recollection of a fierce glory in man's
prowess, in blood, in justice. Edd was the heavier and stronger. He kept the
cowboy at arm's-length and swung him off his feet. But Middleton always came
down like a cat, He was swung against the desks, demolishing them; then his
spurred boots crashed over the teacher's table. They wrestled from there to
the stove, knocking that down. A cloud of soot puffed down from the
stove-pipe. The cowboy ceased to waste breath in curses. His sinister
expression changed to a panic-stricken fear for his own life. He was swung
with violence against the wall. Yet he held on to the gun in a wild tenacity.
They fought all around the room, smashing desk after desk. The time came when
Middleton ceased to jerk at the gun, but put all a waning strength in efforts
to hold it.
When they were on the other side of the room Lucy could not see them. What she
heard was sufficient to keep her in convulsive suspense.
Suddenly out of the corner of her eye she saw Clara sit up and reel from side
to side, and turn her white face toward the furiously struggling men.
"Clara--don't look!" cried Lucy huskily, almost unable to speak. She moved to
go to her sister, but she was spent with fright, and when Clara's purple eyes
fixed in an appalling stare, she quite gave out. Then crash and thud and
scrape, harder, swifter, and the whistle of men's breath moved back across the
room into the field of her vision. Edd was dragging Middleton, flinging him.
The fight was going to the implacable bee-hunter.
"Let go, cowboy. I won't kill you!" thundered Edd.
Middleton's husky reply was incoherent. For a moment renewed strength seemed
to come desperately, and closing in with Edd he wrestled with the frenzy of a
madman.
Suddenly there burst out a muffled bellow of the gun. Edd seemed released from
a tremendous strain. He staggered back toward Lucy. For a single soul-riving
instant she watched, all faculties but sight shocked into suspension. Then
Middleton swayed aside from Edd, both his hands pressed to his breast. He sank
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to his knees. Lucy's distended eyes saw blood gush out over his hands.
Dragging her gaze up to his face, she recoiled in a fearful awe.
"She--she was--" he gasped thickly, his changed eyes wavering, fixing down the
room. Then he lurched over on his side and lay doubled up in a heap.
Edd's long arm spread out and his hand went low, to release the smoking gun,
while he bent rigidly over the fallen man.
"It went--off," he panted. "I was only--tryin' to get it--away from
him...Lucy, you saw."
"Oh yes, I saw," cried Lucy. "It wasn't--your fault. He'd have killed you...Is
he--is he--?"
Edd straightened up and drew a deep breath.
"Reckon he's about gone."
Then he came to help Lucy to her feet and to support her. "Wal, you need a
little fresh air, an' I reckon some won't hurt me."
"But Clara!...Oh, she has fainted again!"
"No wonder. Shore she was lucky not to see the--the fight. That fellow was a
devil compared to Bud Sprall."
"Oh!...Edd, you didn't kill him, too?" implored Lucy.
"Not quite. But he's bad used up," declared Edd as he half carried her across
the threshold and lowered her to a seat on the steps. "Brace up now, city
girl. Reckon this is your first real backwoods experience...Wal, it might have
been worse... Now wouldn't you have had a fine time makin' Bud an' his pard
better men?...There, you're comin' around. We need to do some tall [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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